


To See the Sun

by VespidaeQueen



Category: Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: Circle Tower, Escape, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-19
Updated: 2014-07-19
Packaged: 2018-02-09 11:48:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1981860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VespidaeQueen/pseuds/VespidaeQueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When they find him, he is wreathed in ice and snow, a frightened child underneath a bed who cannot control his magic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To See the Sun

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2011, shortly after Dragon Age 2 was released, though this is my first time posting this particular piece.

When Anders is little, he doesn't know a thing about magic except that it is something Strange, capital letter and all. The Circle Tower is something out of a story to him, and templars versus mages is a fun game that he plays with the other children in the village sometimes. Sometimes, he is a templar, running after them and yelling ' _holy smite!_ ' as loud as he can. Other times, he is a mage, and he wiggles his fingers in the air and pretends that lightening shoots from their tips. It is all fun and games to him, and it's not like any of the children are actually mages or templars or anything special like that.

He has a family – a father who works more than he is around, but smiles so brightly at him when he is there, and a mother who smells of lavender who jokes and laughs, and teaches him to climb the apple trees behind the house. And he is a terror of a little boy, with hair that never lies flat and mud almost permanently smudged across his face, and he pulls the pigtails of the girl with the fiery hair who he will  _never_ admit to liking because girls are  _icky_ , and he is happy.

And then he accidentally sets the barn on fire, and all of it ends.

His mother's eyes are wide and his father is silent and hollow, and Anders  _knows_ that something is wrong. They send him to his room and then there is talking, then yelling, and he curls himself into a ball in the corner, because he did something  _wrong_ , he knows he did, and now his parents voices rise loud enough that he can hear the word  _templar_ , and he is old enough at the point to know that it is  _bad_ .

They try to hide him, for a time, but the magic shows up when it will – when he is too angry, or too sad, or even too happy – and they are found out before too long.

When the templars in their shining suits of armor appear at their door, he knows enough to hide. He squirms under the bed and hugs the pillow his mother had sewn for him to his chest, and maybe,  _maybe_ if he is quiet they won't know he is there.

He is so afraid, and the magic inside him won't stop rising. He hears the thump of armored footsteps in the hall.

When they find him, he is wreathed in ice and snow, a little frightened child underneath a bed who cannot control his magic. But there is a light and a sudden empty hollow within him and the ice stops forming.

“Please,” he hears his mother say, her voice more frantic than Anders has ever heard it. “Please, don't take him. He's just a child-”

“He is a mage,” the templar who holds him says, and Anders struggles. “He must go to the Circle.”

And Anders twists and shouts and screams for his mother and father, but the templars take him, rush him out of the house like he is something  _dangerous_ , and his mother runs to him and catches his hand – once, only once – and holds fast to him until the templars pull her away.

He screams for them even after him home is out of sight, until sharp words from one of the templars silence him, and then he holds fast to his mother's pillow and he never sees his family again.

 

*

 

The tower has few windows, and none close enough to the floor to see out of.

It is a dark place, the light harsh and yellow-red from the torches lining the walls, and Anders wishes for nothing more than to see the sun. To see _it_ , and not just the sunbeams that filter in through the aged glass that lines the top of walls, light that never hits the ground no matter how the sun moves.

That is a lie, of course, because what he wishes for more than anything is to see his mother and father, but the sun is a close second as the first weeks of his life there drag on. He misses trees and grass and dirt, and maybe it is only the floors that he is limited to that lack windows. The tower is tall, _very_ tall – he remembers seeing it for the first time, reaching up to touch the clouds in the sky – and he has only been on one floor of it.

There are templars everywhere, lining the halls, lingering in the shadows, and their silence scares him. Even in all that armor they move quietly, and many times Anders jumps to find that one has been near him. Most wear helmets that shield their faces and this only helps to turn them into things not human within Anders mind.

They are the monsters in his nightmares for some time.

But he is not alone in the tower. There are other apprentices, other _mages_ , and some of them are even close to his age. There is a skinny boy less than a year younger than him with dark skin and hair black as pitch who sleeps on the bed above his in the dormitories named Na'im Amell. He's been in the tower for a few years already, he tells Anders one night when neither of them can fall asleep, and he barely remembers him mother. He remembers the sea, though, and this is something Anders has never seen.

“What is the sea?” he asks him, and Amell looks at him like he is crazy or very deprived or something like that.

“It's like a lake, but bigger,” he says, all matter-of-fact and so sure of himself. “Except the water has salt in it. Mom used to take me there.”

“You don't talk about your dad,” Anders says, curled up in his bed with his mother's pillow clutched to his chest. Amell goes silent for a long moment, and Anders wonders if he has said something wrong.

“Dad died when we were still in Kirkwall,” he finally says, and Anders has no idea what to say to that.

 

*

 

The lessons, it turns out, are hard work, and after a few months in which he struggles to create ice and fire at will he finally starts to see that being here, in some small part, is a good thing. There is _danger_ in magic, especially if there is no control. Amell has set himself on fire _three times_ since the two of them have met, and the boy is _better_ at magic than Anders is.

There is an exercise that the enchanters have them do, to help them better control their magic. It is simple, in theory: create a small ball of energy and keep it in existence for as long as possible.

Anders cannot do it.

The light forms – sometimes - but it sparks and flutters and breaks apart, and sometimes it turns to ice and crashes to the ground. Sometimes, there is fire.

He tells himself that he _must_ do this. If he can learn to control his magic, maybe, _maybe_ , they will let him go.

 

*

 

They let them outside one day in the early spring – he hadn't even known winter had passed for lack of a sky to see – and he finally sees the sun again. It hangs behind clouds and he stands there for awhile, looking up until the sunlight breaks free and falls on his face.

He _cannot_ go back into the tower.

There are three templars with them – enough to handle a handful of little magelings – and he is far enough from them that he could do...do _something_. _Something_.

The water's edge is _right there_.

He jumps.

The water is cold – _freezing_ – and the first moments beneath the surface bring with them a blind panic. But he surfaces and hears the voices of templars yelling, and the fear of the tower and its stone halls wells up within him.

And he _swims_ , faster than he ever has, body rapidly chilling, and by the time he reaches the shore he is cold and shivering and barely able to walk, but the templars are not yet near him, unable to swim in their heavy armor, and he staggers off into the trees, dripping water behind him.

It is fear that keeps him going, running as soon as he can stop shaking long enough to do so. His feet squish in his boots and his breath comes in short gasps, but he _runs_ until he can run no longer and collapses in exhaustion.

He falls asleep under the stars, and in the morning the templars have found him.

 

*

 

He learns what happens to a mage who escapes Kinloch Hold after that. He learns what it's like to be dragged back after a small taste of freedom. He learns how much it hurts to be locked within stone walls once more.

It is only the first of his escapes. Only the first of his attempts.

One day, he hopes, he will escape them completely.

 


End file.
